BIDDEFORD — The first city council meeting since Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero was shot and killed by a federal immigration agent began last week as all municipal meetings do: with the Pledge of Allegiance.

“With liberty and justice for all.”

The six words hung over the crowd of some 75 people gathered in the high school auditorium.

Over the next two hours, dozens of residents stepped up to the microphone. They shared their grief. They shared their anger. They shared a sense that leaders in Biddeford and across Maine aren’t doing enough to prevent another tragedy at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But confronted with federal officers from an opaque agency shattering car windows and violently confronting neighbors, those in the crowd and many of the officials they’re demanding results from are stuck with a difficult dilemma: What power do local officials have over federal agents seemingly acting with a sense of impunity?

What justice will come for Guerrero?

“It’s sad that it’s come to this point. Saying that there’s not much that we can do, that just isn’t enough. It’s just not,” said Biddeford resident Evan Lockwood. “There has to be something.”

“If there’s nothing that (city councilors) can do, then what’s the point of all this?” asked business owner Kelsey Cummings. “Why are we here?”

“Our communities today are actively under attack,” said Tophe Thorne, an immigrant advocate with Presente! Maine. “We are asking this council to stand with us with actions and not statements.”

The community’s outrage was palpable in the hours immediately after the shooting. Hundreds of residents protested, swarming the streets and shutting down Biddeford’s downtown. They were animated, initiating a brief standoff with police after marching into Sen. Susan Collins’ office on Main Street over her vote earlier this year to increase ICE funding.

But as the days wore on, that outrage turned to grief. The crowd of protestors holding signs at Mechanics Park dwindled. The number of flowers and candles at the intersection where Guerrero was shot grew. His blood stain remained on the asphalt.

Where community members were looking for an outlet in the aftermath of the shooting, they’re now looking for answers. Guerrero’s killing and residents’ pleas for action in its wake have prompted wider questions about the power — if any — local authorities have over federal offices and their agents.

The local officials they’re asking don’t have the answers yet. They aren’t sure they ever will.

“There’s this sort of sense of grief and sadness. We’re trying to fight that feeling of hopelessness with action,” said Biddeford city councilor Abigail Woods, who lives just a block away from where Guerrero was shot.

“But what can we actually do about this?”

UNANSWERABLE QUESTIONS REMAIN

The questions Biddeford residents are asking — about what prompted ICE to shoot Guerrero in the street, whether the federal investigation into the incident will be fair and transparent, and whether David Brouillette, the agent who shot Guerrero, will be held accountable — are the same questions that a growing number of cities across the country have asked their leaders.

There have been at least 30 instances across the country of federal immigration agents firing on civilians in cars since President Donald Trump began an immigration crackdown during his second term, according to NPR. At least seven of those incidents were deadly.

In March last year, U.S. citizen Ruben Ray Martinez was shot and killed by an ICE agent while behind the wheel in Texas. In January, Renée Good was gunned down in the front seat of her car in a suburb of Minneapolis. And just days before Guerrero’s death, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was similarly shot dead in his car by an immigration officer in Houston.

In each of those cities, answers from local leaders and ICE officials have been hard to come by.

The agency said it has investigated its officers in the wake of each shooting. But ICE has stymied some local investigations and largely kept the results of its own reviews, including whether the agents involved faced any disciplinary action, under seal.

ICE spokespeople have not responded to the Press Herald’s repeated requests for comment on the status of the investigation into Guerrero’s death. Nor have they answered questions about the precise chain of events that ended with agents handcuffing Guerrero’s limp body as he lay bleeding on the ground with a gunshot wound to his head.

SILENCE AMONG LAW ENFORCEMENT

ICE’s cooperation with other agencies, both federal and local, has shifted drastically under the second Trump administration.

Historically, outside federal agencies have investigated alongside local authorities when a federal agent has used deadly force, said Katherine Hawkins, a senior legal analyst with the nonprofit watchdog organization Project on Government Oversight. Those investigations often resulted in disciplinary action or criminal charges.

But that collaboration and admittedly thin sense of accountability has largely evaporated over the last two years, Hawkins said.

The FBI, which has historically investigated federal use of force incidents, has reportedly been told to stand down on ICE investigations. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, will now investigate itself, NBC News reported.

After two American citizens were killed by ICE agents in Minnesota in January, federal officials portrayed them as domestic terrorists trying to attack immigration officers. When local law enforcement began investigating the shootings, they said the Department of Homeland Security withheld key evidence until this month.

“What happened in Minnesota, it was an agency that wasn’t even going through the motions of a professional investigation in the early days,” Hawkins said. “The officers weren’t even put on administrative leave.”

This month, Trump suddenly and publicly reversed a decision to end all ICE traffic stops instituted in the wake of the shootings in Biddeford and Texas. The Intercept reported this week that ICE has tightened its uniform requirements to mandate agents be publicly identifiable, though they are still allowed to wear face masks.

Vice President JD Vance has asserted that federal agents have “absolute immunity,” even when it comes to the use of deadly force.

While federal agents do have qualified immunity for some of their actions, Hawkins said they are not exempt from state and local laws. There have been instances, even in recent months, of ICE agents being charged for physical and sexual abuse, among other crimes.

Though Brouillette is reportedly being held in protective government custody, it remains unclear whether he will face any repercussions or criminal charges for Guerrero’s death.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey’s office is investigating the shooting, as it does all law enforcement killings in the state. To this point, the office says federal authorities have cooperated with state investigators’ efforts.

The AG’s office has never found an officer-involved shooting in Maine to be unjustified.

A spokesperson for Frey’s office said Thursday they “continue to work cooperatively with our federal partners” but declined to answer questions about the status of the investigation, the extent to which federal authorities are assisting or a rough time frame for when the investigation will be complete.

But when it comes to standard immigration enforcement, ICE has maintained radio silence with Maine officials at all levels, complicating many local departments’ work and conflicting with some leaders’ basic understanding of probable cause.

Biddeford’s police Chief JoAnne Fisk did not respond to requests for comment on this story. York County Sheriff Bill King said ICE has never had any contact with his office or its deputies about their operations, even before Maine legislators moved to enact a law prohibiting local police from collaborating with ICE.

The York County Jail, as with many in Maine, has several immigrants on its staff. Many of them have been on edge since ICE’s arrest of a Cumberland County corrections officer in January, King said. They and many others in southern Maine’s immigrant communities have watched as ICE conducted raids and made arrests without any warning or explanation.

And on the other end of law enforcement, when King’s deputies make a targeted arrest, “We know who they are,” he said. His office has conducted pre-surveillance and built enough evidence not just to prosecute, but to know they have the correct target. When federal agencies like the FBI or DEA do the same in the course of their own investigations, they generally let local sheriffs and police know, almost as a courtesy.

ICE on the other hand, King noted, said Guerrero wasn’t the subject of the warrant agents were serving that clear Monday morning he was killed. The agency hasn’t provided clarification about who they were targeting or why. And for the last year, their actions in Biddeford, York County and the rest of Maine have been carried out largely in the shadows.

“It all begs the question, to me: Do they even have a plan? Is this all haphazard?” King asked. “I’m sure some of the guys (ICE) is looking for are bad guys. But does it call for this? For putting the public in danger?”

“And then they want to investigate themselves?”

THE CITY AND THE FEDS

Residents at the Biddeford council meeting last week asked police to prevent ICE from coming into town or monitoring their activity in the city. Several invoked a 1924 Ku Klux Klan march from Saco to Biddeford that was broken up on the Main Street Bridge by then-Mayor Edward Drapeau and a crowd of Irish- and Franco-Americans.

“We need leaders that say like Mayor Drapeau did 100 years ago, ‘We’re drawing the line at the bridge,'” resident Jonathan Haines said at last week’s meeting. “Dirigo. I lead. Let Biddeford, let Maine, be the one that stops (them) at the bridge.”

It’s unlikely local officials could actually do that, though.

The municipal government and local law enforcement ultimately have little authority over ICE and its agents’ activity, Biddeford Mayor Liam LaFountain said. The federal government supersedes most any authority local governments may try to exert. The city can change its ordinances, the state can investigate the shooting, but ICE’s policies and protocols are at their own discretion.

There have been discussions about drafting a policy to prevent municipal employees from interacting with ICE, LaFountain said, similar to an ordinance Waterville adopted last week. But that would largely be codifying what’s already the city’s standard practice, he said.

“This is a federal agency that we’re dealing with. With federal resources approved by Congress,” LaFountain said. “To rein them in, that’s not something an individual city government can do, even if the majority view of the people who live here want us to.”

“It’s uncharted territory.”

Others are worried rebuking ICE could incur federal retaliation.

King, the county sheriff, recalled when Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce called ICE’s January arrest of a corrections officer in his car “bush league.” The agency abruptly pulled all of its detainees — and a sizable chunk of federal funding — from the Cumberland County Jail days later and publicly chastised Joyce for employing an “illegal alien.”

“How are we gonna fight the feds?” King said. “Look at the price Kevin paid.”

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Ultimately, it seems any changes to how ICE conducts itself will likely be prompted by public outcry.

LaFountain, Woods and other municipal officials are reckoning with the small amount of leeway they have over the agency. King and Fisk, the police chief, are fielding calls for action they know they can’t heed. The only people with authority to affect how ICE enforces immigration law are in Congress and the executive branch of the federal government.

Still, public backlash has already affected how the Trump administration is deploying ICE, Hawkins noted. Greg Bovino, the former chief of Customs and Border Patrol, and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem were both ousted amid uproars over their agencies’ enforcement tactics and responses to the killings of American citizens in Minnesota and elsewhere.

“Outcry at both the local and national level does have some effect on the calculations authorities make,” Hawkins said. “It makes a major difference whether local law enforcement is actively cooperating with ICE, for example. Even the presence of citizens with cameras makes some difference.”

“But there’s not a simple solution to say ‘Let’s just do this thing and keep ICE out of our state entirely,'” she added.

In Biddeford, Guerrero’s killing has revived some community-based efforts that began in January, when ICE initiated an enhanced enforcement operation dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day” in Maine. Woods said she and others have been delivering food and groceries to immigrants scared to leave their homes in the wake of the shooting, as well as providing transportation to bring kids to school and adults to work.

While the city and local officials debate what to do next, she said it’s efforts like those that will hopefully tide an anxious community over until the investigations into Guerrero’s death are completed and ICE ends its aggressive tactics.

“I can’t change the federal government,” Woods said. “But I can help my neighbor.”